Sorry if this has already been covered here, but in the story of the Ark, what happens to all terrestrial plant life during the flood? I mean, wouldn’t most plants die from drowning before the water receded? And what explains stuff like the Giant Sequoia, which can be thousands of years old (older then the flood story)?
Yeah, I know the myth is a bunch of hooey, but how do proponents explain these things?
A god that can create the universe in six days isn’t bothered by details.
When I was growing up believing that stuff, something like that wouldn’t have shaken my faith.
Well, like, obviously, the birds and beasts on the ark had eaten plants and when the floodwaters receded, pooped out the seeds from which the plants regrew.
My understanding is the root of the flood myth is this.
The earth has been in an ice age for the last few million years. During certain periods the glaciers at the poles expand, and at other times they contract. When the ice sheets expand they absorb water from the oceans, causing the sea levels to drop. When they melt the sea level rises.
https://courses.ems.psu.edu/earth107/node/1506
Around 20,000 years ago the ice sheets started going through a melting period. From about 20k years ago to 6k years ago, global sea levels probably rose 400 feet over the course of thousands of years. This caused flooding all over the world (sometimes slow flooding, sometimes rapid flooding in other areas), which is why endless cultures have flood myths. Because endless cultures saw the world they knew flood either quickly or slowly.
On the plus side, this melting supposedly made the weather more stable, so growing crops became more plausible since the weather was more stable during this period. The start of the neolithic revolution starting when the glaciers melted was probably connected.
Another fun fact, the ‘garden of eden’ may have been in the persian gulf. When the sea level was 400 feet lower, that area was land and it was full of food. Then when it flooded the people had to move to the middle east and established agriculture. The whole ‘eating of the tree of knowledge’ was possibly a metaphor for having to transition from a hunter gatherer lifestyle to an agricultural lifestyle.
Except that’s bunk, the Gulf may well have contained a substantial human population when sea levels were lower, but there is no evidence that this population migrated north and initiated agriculture. The archaeological record places the emergence of agriculture[1] in multiple centres of the Fertile Crescent, Anatolia and the Zagros Mountains, and ancient DNA indicates substantial continuity between local hunter-gatherers[2] and the earliest farmers in those regions. The Gulf-oasis-to-agriculture story is counter to the established archaeological sequence. CITE
The whole ‘eating of the tree of knowledge’ was possibly a metaphor for having to transition from a hunter gatherer lifestyle to an agricultural lifestyle.
You seriously think the people who wrote that story in the 7th-5th C. BCE were even aware that there ever had been hunter-gatherers in the Levant? Nine millennia after the entire region was agricultural?
There was also the African humid period. There is evidence for a period ending around 6000 BCE when what is now the Sahara desert was steppe with adequate water.
Ironically, one of the core themes of the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which we find the precursor of the Ark story, is the counterposition of civilisation-wildness expressed by Gilgamesh and his best mate Enkidu’s friendship, and the melancholy of being one without the other.
The peoples between the two rivers were profoundly conscious of their environment and its moods. They knew flooding and were capable of separating the reality they lived in from fable.
Also, all aquatic life. Species need specific conditions; temperature, salinity, depth, food sources. A global flood would kill almost everything in the water, too. Noah would need to bring along a lot of aquariums.
I used to work around a bunch of JWs, they told me they believed God put things like that there to test their faith. They honestly believed that.
Yep. I once overheard: Tour Guide: “Geologists haven’t yet figured out how a rock formation came to be shaped so oddly.” Answer from person next to me: “God made it that way to puzzle them.”
I thought Czarcasm was referring to events that actually had occurred. I apologize.
I remember a B.C. comic strip by Johnny Hart where a caveman is drawing the shuttle craft on a cave wall, explaining to another caveman: “Some day this is going to put an archeologist in a mental institution.”
My google-foo fails me.
Even if there was an ark and it did ground itself on said mountain thousands of years ago, wouldn’t all evidence of it be long gone? Heck, it was made of wood, which is biodegradable. Any metal would have been iron, which rusts away. Even for a believer, it seems like a fool’s errand.
Claim without evidence.
Well, it’s just an opinion based on my layman’s knowledge of very old wooden boats. It’s certainly a more sensible one than thinking, “Let’s go for a walk on Mt. Ararat. … … Gee, look, there’s the ark!” LOL
Sure, I’m up for a hike. But let’s get our cleats on so we don’t get blown off the top by the whoooosh.
Thinking this through a bit more, Why would it be on a mountaintop? I get that when the water recedes those are the first things that appear, but all of the wildlife couldn’t live there. And if the water was receding fast enough that they could walk down to the lowlands, why not just wait?
You think Noah thought to put a motor in the ark?
When god tells you to disembark, the cruise is over.
Agreed! Also, all land creatures are dead because they drowned, so they need to fish. Letting the water recede to its basically normal levels would be beneficial I would think.
He not only didn’t have a motor, he didn’t have a rudder. So the story goes he just bumped into it.